Building a website for a (very) small business... Ques. & Progress...

[DCBass]

Hello All,

My mother has been really getting into chinese calligraphy art and poetry lately, and would like to begin selling her work online.

For her birthday, I'd like to design and build her a website to do so.

I already know some basic html and css, and I've made a few webpages for my employer. However, I've never made a site from scratch before, so I have a few questions, namely:

What is my first step?

What should I be looking for in a web host?

Any piece of advice that a beginner might not think of as they get started?

I look forward to your answers and sharing my progress here on the forums.

Thanks in advance!

Cheers,

DCBass

 

[italiano40]

Hello All,

My mother has been really getting into chinese calligraphy art and poetry lately, and would like to begin selling her work online.

For her birthday, I'd like to design and build her a website to do so.

I already know some basic html and css, and I've made a few webpages for my employer. However, I've never made a site from scratch before, so I have a few questions, namely:

What is my first step?

What should I be looking for in a web host?

Any piece of advice that a beginner might not think of as they get started?

I look forward to your answers and sharing my progress here on the forums.

Thanks in advance!

Cheers,

DCBass

first step is to built the home page and database

I recommend godaddy.com as a web host

i would look at some CMS which is a good site to use to sell things, i recommend joomla CMS

 

[Nadasive]

I suggest iWeb, but if you don't want to sign up with .mac and pay monthly you could try this:
http://www.officelive.com/?xid=27A72ABF-D845-402D-8B56-AD6B1CFFFC66&WT.srch=1

Both work well, extremely well

 

[tominated]

The first step is to brainstorm. Brainstorm thing like pictures, layouts, text, etc. and record it some how. Then do some concept sketches of different layouts implementing what you brainstormed and possibly other new things.

Once you have chosen on of those, get to work in photoshop, fireworks, or whatever you use and make something reasonably easy to code up (not too much graphics, rectangular objects, etc.). Slice it into sections with repeating backgrounds (like a navigation bar background) in the smallest possible sections. Export it as images only.

Start coding up the basic html, leaving out anything that doesn't contain important content (leave out extra divs that are for separators and that sort of thing). Download a css reset (eric meyer's reset is a good one) and put the reference in the html. Start your css and organise it into sections. set sizes, backgrounds, margins, etc. Test it out with some dummy content (lorem ipsum for example) and refine it to get it looking good.

You'll figure out the rest.

 

[decksnap]

basic outline of my process for small websites...

A. Objectives & Scope
B. Site Mapping
C. Content Gathering
D. Creative Development
E. Design Mechanical/Coding
F. Testing